ABSTRACT
The skillful orator must be an expert in the discovery and formulation of persuasive arguments. Even more, as Plato says,1 he (or she) must be an expert in arousing appropriate emotions in an audience. Still more important is the instinct for timing, the knowledge of when to make which argument, when to appeal to the emotions. Narrative poets also need such skills and understandings if they are to portray the way people interact with each other at the same time as instructing, pleasing, and moving their audience. When Martin Camargo and Rita Copeland proposed the topic of Chaucer and Rhetoric,2 I decided to examine the way in which such a self-conscious and experimental verbal artist as Chaucer conceived the poetic and rhetorical question of the relationship between argument and emotion. This idea led me immediately to the fourth book of Troilus and Criseyde, which is dominated by arguments among the three main characters and by expressions of Troilus and Criseyde’s grief at having to part. In fact, almost every scene of this book comprises grief and argument. It interested me that Chaucer should devote a book to something that is also a key issue in rhetorical theory.
